


Cry

by Ekatarinabeisel76



Series: Drowning [5]
Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Community: 100_prompts, Coping, Depression, M/M, Resolution, Self-Harm, Unresolved Sexual Tension, traumatized Danny "Danno" Williams
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-17
Updated: 2012-10-21
Packaged: 2017-11-16 11:57:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/539169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ekatarinabeisel76/pseuds/Ekatarinabeisel76
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Danny is the only one who sees that Chin's hurtling into a downward spiral, and it's because he recognizes it. And Putting aside his feelings for Chin turns out to be easier than than admitting that. For #020 Cry</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part 1

#020 Cry

It was a week to the day since Malia’s funeral when Chin finally decided that he could bear putting all of her things in boxes. Most of her wishes were clearly stated in her will, but there’s one tiny clause in almost every sentence that feels like a knife in Chin’s heart every time he reads it - ‘Should I leave no surviving children’.

The stream of thought that invades his mind repeatedly is, as follows: Malia wanted children. We talked about it. I shut her down. I wasn’t ready. I made her wait. I should have just given her what she wanted. 

Every time he manages to snap himself out it but focusing on his different boxes and bags. It felt so wrong to put her clothes in a trash bag marked, ‘Good Will’, but there just wasn’t a better option. Her clothing is the easiest, except for some of her favorite items, and of course her wedding dress. Eventually, Chin coaxed himself into parting with her swimsuits, shoes, and scrubs, but he couldn’t let go of her wedding dress and cobalt blue scarf that his aunt had knit for her as a Christmas present the first time that they were engaged.

The Jewelry was easy too, since she had stated in her will that all it should go to her sister. He threw out all of her bathroom articles, and hit a road block when it came to her perfume. In a momentary flash of rage he lashed out at her favorite bottle, something strong and sweet. It crashed to the floor and shattered into a hundred tiny fragments of colored glass swimming in clear fluid. He reached into a draw full of his handkerchiefs under the sink and sopped up the heady perfume. 

And then, knowing that it was a terrible idea, he lifted the kerchief to his nose. He breathed the scent in deep, taking several lungfuls of Malia’s scent in before he sunk down the wall to sit on the floor of the bathroom - their bathroom – and began to sob into the kerchief.

He had cleared the house room by room, starting with her medical journals in the living room and ending with the random odds and ends in her nightstand. He was done with it now; he was free to stay on the floor and ball or crawl into bed and wallow in his maddening depression. But the bed was cold and empty, and the house was silent except for the sounds of him crying, holding onto the last piece of Malia that he had left.

And then he cried some more, if only for the fact that the love of his life had been reduced to a perfume-soaked handkerchief.

The kerchief remained hidden away in his pocket for a whole two weeks. He took special care to hide his use of it from his colleagues. It felt like a drug, an addiction, a weakness of his mind, to need that one scrap of cloth so much. He knew that the team had their own suspicions as to what was dragging him down, and Chin guessed that they all thought that he would snap out of it eventually, after the pain had passed. But it had been nearly a month, and the pain was still just as fresh as it had been when he had walked into the Morgue and seen Malia lying on the ME’s table, cold and lifeless.

Steve assumed that Chin was strong enough to deal with it. 

Kono assumed that Chin would tell her if things got really bad.

They both assumed that he knew that they were behind him. They both assumed that he would rely on the strength of them team if he needed it. But he wasn’t strong enough, and things were really bad.

Danny carried no such assumptions about anything. Chin didn’t have the presence of mind to work out why that was through the dark cloud hanging over him, but he had learned that it was a dual edged sword; it made Danny more annoying in that he knew and Chin couldn’t deceive him with fake smiles and muttered assurances, and closer because he knew.

Chin just wasn’t sure how he knew. When he looked at Danny, there was a puzzle in his eyes. He recognized sympathy over pity in the blonde’s gaze, and a gentle firmness that conveyed a commitment to him, to Chin, in this dark hour he was stumbling through. Those eyes surround Chin in comfort and safety in varying shades of azure. He revels in them for as long as he can without anyone noticing, which is only a few seconds really, but it’s enough to keep him sane a few more hours.

Those stormy blue eyes don’t provide much comfort when Chin’s alone at the office though. He stays late most nights, because there’s no one at home to call him and ask what’s keeping him, and neither Steve nor Kono think that disturbing him from his work is a good idea.

But one particular night Danny decided to stay at work late too, since his apartment was being fumigated anyway and the chair in his office was sturdier and less expensive than a hotel room. That’s what brought him to wake up at midnight and walk out to find fresh coffee made and Chin hunched over paperwork at his desk.

“Morning.” Chin says with as much cheer as he can manage. Of course, his voice comes out choked with gloom and bleak.

“Is it?” Danny asked in jest.

He didn’t get anything out of Chin. That in itself wasn’t exactly surprising considering what time it was, but the fact that the other man didn’t even look at the coffee he presented to him was alarming.

‘Here it comes.’ Danny thought as he pulled up a chair to sit with Chin at his desk.

He gave a thoughtful sigh, not knowing what to say or do to convey his concern. He was sure that Kono had given Chin a series of lectures on the subject of appropriate grieving methods by now, but after three weeks of downward progress, he couldn’t bring himself to leave it at that. Shrugging off his concerns and placing responsibility on someone else wasn’t how he had gotten through his life, and he didn’t plan to start now, not with Chin. Not with someone who he desperately wanted to be with, but couldn’t in the foreseeable future.

Danny eventually arrived at the conclusion that there was no point in trying to plot out what he was going to say, because he really ought to know that conversations like this didn’t follow regulations. They bucked all of the rules and procedures. They threw the playbook out the window and ad-libbed everything on a whim. So he decided to just let the words flow. After all, he had been through this before; he knew what needed to be said and what was given.

“It hurts more than anything you’ve ever felt before in your life.” He finally said. It was as good a place to start as any. It wasn’t conjecture or theory; it was solid, stone-cold fact. They both knew it to be true. There was no way to argue it.

Chin nodded at first, remaining silent. He shifted his gaze up from his paperwork and looked Danny in the eyes. He was surprised that anyone would be here at this hour, much less that they would talk to him. His stare was blank, listless and without soul, and it bore a hole in Danny’s heart.

Chin didn’t reply. So Danny went on talking. It shouldn’t have been so difficult; after all, he practically never stopped talking when he was awake, and sometimes in his sleep too. But it was hard; the lack response from the other man left him tense and unsure of what direction he was going with this.

“Everything you see when you open your eyes reminds you of them, and all you can see when you close them is the last minutes you spent with them, and all the things you didn’t do right.” He continued.

Silence reigned supreme in the office as both men stared at each other. It wasn’t awkward though, which was a strange situation for Danny; for once he was the only one talking and it was perfectly alright.

“So it all just piles up on top of you until you’re carrying so much crap around with you that you can barely move. Every muscle hurts, and feeling is even worse.” He paused, reaching back from something specific from his own memory, but then Chin found it for him.

“I wish I could stop breathing.” His voice was raw and hoarse, low in his throat. “I wish I could stop breathing, so that I wouldn’t have to feel it anymore.” He finished. 

“What do you do, when it gets really bad?” Danny asked him softly. 

Slowly, Chin reached into his pocket and pulled out the perfumed cotton handkerchief. It was unremarkable, pale and faded at the corners.

“Hm.” Danny gave an empty chuckle. He reached his hand up to the collar of his shirt as he continued, his fingers working as busily at the buttons as his tongue worked at getting the words out, “Truth be told, I’ve seen you use it. But trust me, there’s worse you could have done.”

And then his shirt was off and his chest was bare before Chin’s gaze. That’s when the darker man realized that he never saw the detective completely naked the night that they had hooked up after the party at Kamekona’s. Danny had batted his hands away whenever he had dipped his hands under the hem of the shirt he had been wearing. 

His chest is smooth, obviously shaved. But where there isn’t hair dappling his chest, there are scars. They are pale and thin, and Danny can already feel himself blushing crimson as Chin stares at them. He reaches up to shrug his shirt back on, but Chin’s hand shoots out to grab his. The action catches Danny off guard, as no one has ever really wanted to see the scars before, so he levels his gaze with the other man’s and takes the movement as a sign of progress.

Slowly, Chin slid his hand up Danny’s arm, and that’s when he realized that there were more scars on his ribs and on the underside of his bicep. He stood up from his chair as he began to trace one laceration that snaked just under one of the blonde’s pectorals and curved down to cut across his sternum.

“You put a lot of thought into hiding them.” He says silently. “You were ashamed of them?” Danny tried to brush it off with a nonchalant joke. 

“Good Catholic school boys from decent homes aren’t supposed to cut themselves up.” His attempt at flippancy only got him a slightly tighter grip on his bicep and a sharp look from Chin. He really should have known not to try making light of it with someone who had been there.

“So why did you do it?” Chin asked, moving his hand up to travel the topmost scar; a jagged line barely visible that ran from his collarbone to the very edge of what was covered by most shirt collars.

The caress, and that was what Danny desperately wanted it to be, was warm and feather-light. His neck was sensitive as all hell, and he prayed that it wasn’t something that Chin remembered form their torrid one night stand.

‘Cool it Danny!’ he ordered himself. ‘This is about getting him better, not you getting laid!’ He was harsh with himself, but then again, he had always been like that. It was one of the few things easily identified as being a common denominator between the two men.

“I watched my best friend drown.” That was the simple version, but Chin’s expression was a heavy indicator that he knew that it wasn’t the whole story. His dark eyes were soft and demanding as he stared at Danny’s face, a pained mask of flippancy and humor.

“How did it happen?” Chin pressed, taking up a soothing rhythm up and down the detective’s arms with his hands.

“We decided to race to the buoy and back; I got stuck and he tried to save me.” Then, to clarify, “It started with me nearly drowning, and it ended with him getting dragged under by an undertow.”

Chin’s face and hand faltered, but soon he resumed his gentle rubbing on Danny’s shoulder.

“How old were you?” he asked.

Those hands were lulling him into a wonderful place. He would have answered it if some nagging voice in the back of his head hadn’t come out of nowhere and accused him of being a selfish sex-driven sociopath.

“It doesn’t matter.” He insisted. Chin leveled a pointed gaze at him, but he didn’t press the issue. “You know, the whole point of this conversation was to demonstrate that you aren’t alone in this.”

Chin’s hand got heavier against his skin as he dragged his fingers down Danny’s chest, hooking his them slightly to scrape his nails against the cool flesh. The blonde shivered; he desperately wanted his shirt back on, but he’d give Chin forever to stop doing that.

“I think you’ve made your point.” The other man responded softly, almost demurely, “but waking up to a cold bed felt pretty alone.” Danny’s throat tightened. He stumbled over his tongue as he tried to offer an explanation for his Houdini act. 

“This will make no sense whatsoever, I’m sure, but here it goes anyway; I desperately wanted to have sex with you, and usually when things that I want to happen do, it turns out shitty.”

“So you have commitment issues.” Chin supplied.

“Those too, but they come in second to the extreme emotional baggage even on the worst day, trust me.” Danny said in complete seriousness.

Chin fixed him with a pair of smoldering eyes. Dear God, Danny felt like he was in a teen romance novel. It was stupid really; his throat was tight and his stomach felt funny and his face was tingling for God’s sake! Son of a bitch they were bedroom eyes! Chin was giving him bedroom eyes. He was doomed, absolutely doomed.

“Can we get a do-over?” Chin asked. His voice was unadorned and flat, but nowhere near crying, so Danny felt pretty satisfied with his handiwork.

“Don’t see why not.” Danny said quietly, feeling his blush creep up his face as Chin’s lips drew nearer to his.

Chin must have been in high demand during spin-the-bottle games, was really all Danny could think as Chin gripped him like a tipsy prom date. There’s one hand entwined in his hair, pulling his head back and angling his mouth for better access, and the other one’s wrapped around his waist and resting on his hip, thumb slipped under the waistband of his trousers to trace a small scar. And then Chin licks his bottom lip, and Danny opens his mouth. It’s the invitation that the taller man’s been waiting on for a month, and he proceeds to fuck the blonde’s mouth sweetly and slowly with his tongue.

When they pull apart for air, Chin’s pressed himself up against Danny and has him pinned between the solid mass of his body and the desk. Between pants and harsh draws of air, Chin manages to speak. It’s the first time in nearly a month that his voice has sounded normal, and that fact alone makes Danny shiver and tremble with desire.

“My place?” he asked.

“Hell yes.” Danny hissed, reaching for his shirt behind him. Chin beat him to it, and grabbed him by the wrist to pull him out of the building and into the parking lot.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here's the smut I promised. I've got another fic in the works too, something interesting.

Once Chin got Danny into the house, he took his time getting them through the living room, down the corridor, and into the bedroom, something that seemed incredibly oxymoronic considering how many traffic laws Chin had shamelessly violated getting them there. It took him five seconds to undress himself and ten minutes to divest Danny of his clothes. From there he spent another fifteen minutes just kissing him, pinning him on his back to the mattress by his lips, until Danny couldn’t stand it anymore.

“Chin, would you please fuck me already?” he begged breathily, lifting his head up to stare at the other man’s face. He laughed darkly, a response that gave Danny absolutely no comfort whatsoever.

“Oh no.” he replied, pausing to nip at Danny’s chest. “We’re going to take this nice and slow.” He added, lightly dragging his nails up the blonde’s side as he straddled him. “You see, the longer I drag it out, the more intense it’ll be.”

“So your plan is to kill me.” Danny teased, lifting his head up to suckle at Chin’s nipple for a moment. The taller man moaned softly, and ran his hand down his the detective’s arm to encircle his wrist.

“Not at all sweetheart.” And Danny never thought that being called something so unmanly would turn him on so much. Meanwhile, Chin began to raise his arm up to the head board. Danny didn’t notice it thought, everything else was at the back of his mind, and everything was second to what Chin was saying. “I figure that if I make love to you until you’re boneless, you won’t be able to run off again.”

Guilt hit Danny like boot to the gut, until he braved a chance look up at the other man’s face. He was serious, undoubtedly sincere, but his gaze wasn’t sharp with the sting of rejection or hurt. The uproar in the pit of his stomach quieted, and he felt his muscles slowly unclench as it did.

At least until her felt something cold and metal snap around wrists with a series of clicking noises. Startled by the noise, he looked up at his wrist, and found it trapped in one cuff, chained to the headboard.

“Er…Chin?” He asked, feeling pulse flutter and throb as his anxiety mounted.

“Insurance.” The darker man explained in brief as he set his lips to the detective’s neck, soothing him with a steady rhythm in his hand and his tongue.

Then Chin carved a path from his neck, down his chest, to his groin, and licked at the tip of his erection with all the gentle care he had taken in their kiss. Danny bit his lip and tugged at the cuff adorning his right wrist. He set his free hand in Chin’s hair. Chin didn’t do anything to discourage him; in fact, as soon as Danny’s fingers intertwined his hair he reached his own hand up to Danny’s mouth. The blonde didn’t need to be told what to do. He took the two extended fingers into his mouth and worked his tongue around them, eagerly laving at them with his tongue just as Chin swallowed him.

If Danny had thought that Chin had drawn out the foreplay portion of their evening, the oral sex portion qualified as torturously slow. That was Danny’s opinion at least. Though Chin wouldn’t stop smirking, especially when Danny started pushing his hips up. 

“Chin, please!” the blonde pleaded from around the other man’s fingers, fisting his hand into Chin’s smooth crop of dark hair.

Chin released him from his mouth with a wet pop, and raised his eyes up to meet Danny’s. Slowly, he withdrew his fingers from the detective’s mouth and crawled back up the length of his body to kiss him again; slowly, repeatedly, until they both forgot everything else outside of the heated space between their bodies.

“I’m sorry.” Chin panted. “I can’t hold out. I need to finish this now.”

“Best news I’ve heard all day.” Danny moaned as Chin turned him over, mindful of his shoulder and his immobile wrist. But of course, since Chin is damned determined to take is time even through his own impatience, he has to prepare Danny like he’s a freakin’ virgin.

“I’m not going to brake ya’ know.” Danny said, growing steadily more impatient even as Chin dipped another lube-soaked finger inside of him. And then, as if to quiet him like a fitful child, the taller man pressed a kiss to the back of his neck.

“Soon.” Chin said soothingly in between another flurry of kissed to his back as he slipped a third finger inside of the shorter man. “Don’t want to hurt you.”

Those words were all it took to calm Danny down; they were soft and honest, and there was a promise in them that he’d never heard before. And soon enough Chin is taking his fingers out slowly and licking the curve of Danny’s spine as he lays himself over top of the shorter man.

It takes one small rock of his hips to get inside of Danny, and another five or so to hit his prostate. Danny dissolves into quivering, moaning, mess underneath of him, and he enjoys more than anything else he’s ever experienced.

Chin’s theory proved absolutely solid. By the time he allows Danny to orgasm the blonde’s subconscious freely flows out of his mouth in a string of profanity and exaltations. Chin kept smiling, slamming his hips up against him just a little harder, and dipping his head down to brush his lips against sweaty red-gold hair. The shockwaves that racked Danny’s body as he came pulled Chin over the precipice with him, but that didn’t seem to slow the other man down at all. He rode out his orgasm for a few moments, until he collapsed against the blonde, finally spent and thoroughly exhausted.

They laid there in silence, listening to the whir of the ceiling fan overhead and their own harsh pants. Finally, after minutes that seemed to stretch into hours of quiet admiration and reflection, Chin rolled off of Danny and rose up from the bed.

“Don’t go anywhere.” Chin called over his shoulder teasingly as he crossed the bedroom and entered the bathroom. He quickly grabbed a washcloth and ran it under the warm water faucet in the sink before returning to the bed.

He cleaned them both off slowly and carefully. When he was done he dipped the cloth into the cleft of the other man’s rear playfully, and earned soft moan in reward as he massages the clenched ring of muscle.

“Sure you don’t want to just get in the shower?” Danny asked him.

“We’ll have to do that in a few hours anyway.” Chin answered as he reached up to undo the handcuffs. His hand faltered though, and his lips curved into a small smile as he regard the scene in front of him.

“What is it?” Danny asked.

“You look really hot right now.” He said softly, trailing his fingers up the blonde’s arm in a feather-light caress.

“Thanks.” Danny replied. “Now untie me and get your ass back in bed.” And then, after a pause, he added. “I’m tired.”

“Too tired to sneak out after I’m asleep?” Chin asked.

“Oh God in Heaven, yes.” Danny exhaled. He was deeply tired. He was tired down to his soul and his bones and his heart. It shone through in his eyes like dim light through a curtain, and it was reflected in Chin’s when he looked up at his face.

His wrist fell out of the cuff and landed in Chin’s grasp as he climbed back into bad, reaching for the covers. Danny helped him smooth the blanket out over the two of them, and then they settled down. The clock read 1:15 AM, and it was a Friday. They had to get up for work in about six hours, but all of that seemed inconsequential to the fact that they were there, together, and happier than they’d been in a long time.

“Danny?” Chin asks quietly, not wanting to wake his lover if he was already asleep.

“Hm?” Danny mumbles, opening his eyes to look at Chin.

“We’re an item now, aren’t we?” there’s a tiny note of fear and anxiety in his voice, and Danny’s not even sure how to put it to bed. 

“Yeah.” He answers finally, his words like a knife in the silence around them. “We’re an item.”

“Do we want the team to know?” Chin asked him tentatively. Danny smiles, because that’s a much easier question, and honestly, everything seems so much easier now that they’ve settled where they stand.

“They’ll find out eventually anyway. There’s no point in trying to hid it.” and then he turns to kiss Chin, and it’s the first time he ever done it, and he loves it. “Why would we want to anyway?”

Chin kisses him back fervently, trailing down to his collarbone to scrape at the sensitive hollow at the bottom of his neck. They settle back down into comfortable silence once again. This time, it’s Danny who brakes it though.

“But if you and Steve so much as think about plotting a double date with Cathy I will punch you in the kidney.”

Chin snorts before he opens his mouth and lets out the laugh threatening to burst through his teeth. It’s an amazing sound, and Danny thinks he can spend forever listening to it.

“How about Max?” he asked teasingly.

“I like Max.” Danny said. “Max is nice, and sane, and so not the person I ever thought Steve would hook up with.”

“They serious?” Chin asked.

“Counted twenty texts and three calls yesterday.” Danny supplied.

“Sounds serious.” Chin thought aloud. Silence reigned again for a few moments, until Chin asked, “Are we seriously gossiping in bed after having sex? Is this going to constitute our usual pillow talk?”

“If it’s between that and the stuff we put in case reports, I definitely pick shameless gossip.”

“True.” And then, tentatively, he said, “I love you.”

The words hung in the air for a moment, until Danny turned and kissed him again, for the second time ever. God he really enjoyed doing this.

“I love you too.”

When the alarm clock tolled shrilly a few hours later, neither man minded getting up as much as they thought they would, because for once their dreams weren’t better than reality. Their reality was warm, and safe, and happy, but most importantly, their reality wasn’t separate. They were together, after a long and bumpy ride, but the present was worth the past.


End file.
